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What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

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Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#31

Post by dagmx »

spookie wrote: post #29
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market of VFX, which without an Mac Pro, might end up going back to Windows or custom built Linux desktops, like many Hollywood studios did when migrating away from SGI, and Pro wasn't still an option.

I assume the tile based rendering architecture is the biggest footgun in the new Apple SoC's. It just doesn't scale with a lot of polygons. I don't see how they can solve this either.

Tile based rendering wouldn’t matter for VFX work. They use path tracing. Nobody is really using rasterizers except for viewports, where it’s rare to be pushing so many polys that you’d bog down the GPU first (you’d almost always hit memory limits or CPU limits first dealing with that many transforms).

I’m not sure I agree that a TBDR is bad for high poly counts. There’s nothing inherent to the architecture that I can think of that would limit it for pure polygon work. Usually the biggest hold up is full screen effects that need to work on the entire buffer but those are rare for VFX.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#32

Post by microtonal »

eastbound wrote: post #16
dwaite wrote: post #10

IMHO Mac mini isn't going to die any time soon; it is there in the lineup to be hostable/rackable operations glue for running old software and (old operating systems) headless. I doubt they will release a M2 Pro Mini. They will instead update the Mac Studio. Conversely, if they make a M2 Pro in the current Mini form factor, they'll likely use that as an excuse to redesign the regular M2 Mini to be smaller (Mac Micro)…

I buy Mac Mini because OSHA once demanded (and I find it’s not a bad idea) that I use screens instead of laptops to avoid employees spending 7hrs bending to neck. So they have 2 displays at work and 2 displays at home, and a Mac Mini, total 2300€, better than a 2800€ Macbook Pro + screens. What is the state of the art, do all of you simply buy a top-notch Macbook Pro and work on it all day?

I use a MacBook Pro and hook it up to a Thunderbolt dock + external screen at whatever desk I’m working.

It’s more convenient than a Mac Mini, since I have the same machine everywhere.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#33

Post by kergonath »

eastbound wrote: post #19
jamujamu wrote: post #4

Hopefully what’s also left is a 27-inch iMac with M2 or M2 Pro chip inside. The current 24-inch iMac just doesn’t cut it, and the Mac Studio + Apple Display combo is way to expensive compared to the price point of Intel iMacs.

The lack of proper 27-inch displays with the quality of Apple (apart the $1800 Apple Display) is the reason I’m not replacing my iMac…

I had to replace my 27-inch iMac anyway (it just died). But I agree with you, I haven’t found a display as good as the iMac’s that isn’t €1500. I settled with what was supposed to be one of the best Dells for that size (4K, which is itself a compromise); the viewing angles are suboptimal and luminosity is not that great.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#34

Post by pigsty »

akamaka wrote: post #27
teruakohatu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. It will simplify MacOS when they end Intel support.

That’s aside from the point. They could accomplish that by simply killing off the Mac Pro line. The question is how they will pay for a high-end chip when they no longer can rely on Intel to spread out the development cost among many customers.

I feel like Mac Pro purchasers also have an accompanying MacBook Pro and iPhone and are more entwined in the ecosystem than the typical user.

Frustrating those people likely comes with a risk of losing high value customers.

I think it’s similar to the model a lot of game consoles have. They make little to negative profit on the console itself during the first couple years, but make it up on software and other benefits of hardware lock-in.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#35

Post by cm2187 »

teruakohatu wrote: post #7
akamaka wrote: post #5

How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some inn…

> clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. It will simplify MacOS when they end Intel support.

Do we know how long it will take? Apple doesn't have a huge history of backward compatibility. This could be a not so subtle nudge to force everyone to re-buy their hardware at a time people are keeping their computer hardware for longer.

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#36

Post by dagmx »

ksec wrote: post #15
akamaka wrote: post #5

How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Most of the M-series chips are shared across multiple products, but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. I don’t see Apple doing it simply as a vanity project, so there will have to be some inn…

>How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Which is the question I have been asking since 2015 . From a cost prospective it never made any sense. Presumably they will wait until Mac Studio becoming powerful enough to fill the gap. >but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip…

Metal is a feature of the OS not the hardware. Every Mac supports metal today.

Some caveats:

* maybe not true if you go back to the introduction of metal but idk

* metal feature support varies by hardware

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#37

Post by brigade »

eastbound wrote: post #16
dwaite wrote: post #10

IMHO Mac mini isn't going to die any time soon; it is there in the lineup to be hostable/rackable operations glue for running old software and (old operating systems) headless. I doubt they will release a M2 Pro Mini. They will instead update the Mac Studio. Conversely, if they make a M2 Pro in the current Mini form factor, they'll likely use that as an excuse to redesign the regular M2 Mini to be smaller (Mac Micro)…

I buy Mac Mini because OSHA once demanded (and I find it’s not a bad idea) that I use screens instead of laptops to avoid employees spending 7hrs bending to neck. So they have 2 displays at work and 2 displays at home, and a Mac Mini, total 2300€, better than a 2800€ Macbook Pro + screens. What is the state of the art, do all of you simply buy a top-notch Macbook Pro and work on it all day?

OSHA didn't consider a properly adjusted laptop stand acceptable? Well, I only use one to reuse the laptop as a second display...

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#38

Post by rosywoozlechan »

dagmx wrote: post #36
ksec wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How will Apple recoup the cost of designing a powerful chip for a product like the Mac Pro, which is presumably their lowest-selling product? Which is the question I have been asking since 2015 . From a cost prospective it never made any sense. Presumably they will wait until Mac Studio becoming powerful enough to fill the gap. >but the Mac Pro seems to be a clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip…

Metal is a feature of the OS not the hardware. Every Mac supports metal today. Some caveats: * maybe not true if you go back to the introduction of metal but idk * metal feature support varies by hardware

It's true that currently Metal is available across different GPUs, but the feature set available is dictated by the hardware:

https://developer.apple.com/metal/Metal-Feature-Set-Tables.p...

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#39

Post by iamtedd »

lapcat wrote: post #11
teruakohatu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clear case where using a powerful off-the-shelf Intel chip makes more business sense right now. It will simplify MacOS when they end Intel support.

Exactly this. There's a cost to supporting Intel forever only for the Mac Pro and nothing else. Not only a cost to Apple, but also a cost to 3rd party Mac developers, who would be even less likely to have the resources to support the Mac Pro for its own sake. Apple dropped PowerPC support in Mac OS X (10.6) 3.5 years after the Intel transition started, and they dropped Rosetta support in Mac OS X (10.7) 2 years after…

You don't think it's possible that the cost to maintain MacOS support for Intel is already built into the price of a Mac Pro?

Re: What’s Left in the Apple Silicon Transition

#40

Post by samwillis »

The Mac Studio was a new product category, sitting just beneath the Mac Pro. I suspect during development they were unsure of if it would actually be the Mac Pro, that would have probably been another 2013 Mac Pro debacle though.

The Mac Studio must be decimating Mac Pro sales, it must fit what 70-80% of Mac Pro users wanted. It's going to be incredible hard to Apple to justify development of an extended M architecture for a product used by a tiny fraction of their customers.

It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't press go on full Mac Pro development until they saw how the market reacted to the Studio.

One possibility is they reintroduce the XServe (and maybe XServe Cloud) with the larger expandable architecture to help justify its development.

The only other option is expanding the Mac Studios capability with external "stackable" peripherals, such as eGPUs.

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